Feelings in games?

After reading a great article about the feeling of achievement in Eve Online, the original GameSetWatch question that started it all up made me reminisce about the time I saw a big 'D' that scared the pants off me.

I'd been playing Roguelike games almost since their inception and had picked up a new variant of Moria that had colour! (most of us poo poo'd the idea as it felt all too graphicky, but we played it anyway because it actually did have better gameplay).

I'm down at ~level 20, when I turn the corner to see an out-of-depth 'D' only a couple of paces away. OMG. 'D's are ancient dragons, one of the more tougher critters in the game and usually down near the level 50 mark.

I turned to Andrew playing next to me and we both freak out a little before looking at all the options and strategizing how to run away without getting eaten or dare we attack?

After 15 minutes we've come up with a semi-decent strategy to take him on (there's no going back) so we take another step and the 'D' changes to red.
"O.M.G"!
Ancient multi-hued dragon! Biggest, baddest dragon around and NO chance of escaping now. We're both screaming at the screen and then, catching ourselves, laughing at each other getting so worked up about one little ASCII character ...

Imagination, the best graphics card bar none.

This individual has been taken for repairs

Bret headed off on his Tassie holiday yesterday and Iain marked his absence by placing a sign on his desk.

e65

My phone contract has finally run its course and it's time to get a new one. I've been without my k750i for almost 2 years after it was pinched on my way over to San Fransisco, and my old t610 is great, but the charger doesn't fit well anymore and 1Mb onboard just doesn't cut it nowadays.

The N95 is certainly drawing the plaudits at the moment, but including a GPS that I won't use and a 5megapixel camera that stil doesn't beat our current digital, it's looking like overkill. I like the fact that it has a 3.5mm headphone jack, as there's lots of different things I could do with that (earbuds for on the move, headphone/mic for talking here at home, and output tospeakers for music).

I've settled on an e65 with a $49 cap plan at Optus and I must say. B. E. A.utiful!
Just about all the features I was after came a neat little package. Actually, the size wasn't an issue to start with as I've used the K-JAM at work and it seemed an Ok form factor, but taking the e65 out of the box I was surprised how thin it was for what it could do. Fits in the hand well and even with a somewhat bulky hard case protector it's still thinner than I was expecting.

WiFi is awesome. Never going back. My mobo had wifi built in, but there was no real reason to install it as the system was flaky enough without running stuff I didn' need. It took 5 mins to get it up an running as an access point, most of the time finding the antenna and downloading the latest driver. With it up and running it was a cinch to start browsing straight from the phone. At work it was a tad bit harder to get past the proxy server, and entering the authentication each time I need to get out is painful and certainly going to make it all but a novelty. Connectivity brings all sorts of goodness though. I'm still getting the exchange setup at work to transfer over wifi, but once that's in it'll mean I can receive emails anywhere in the school.

Wifi also brings fring. When I was looking at whether skype could be put onto the e65, I stumbled upon fring as a solution for all voip apps that I use! amazing! Can't wait to test it out. In essence that could mean virtually $0 spent on calls as 95% of them will be within wifi zones. I'm going to be pushing it to get close to the $300 cap anyway, so it's probably a moot point. Hopefully wifi will help me out in Seattle too.

Setting ringtones was pissing me off, but Sandy finally found it hidden in profiles. Makes sense once you find it, but it seemed strange not being able to do a simple mobile task. Sandy was claiming that not understanding how a mobile works is a sign of old age. Pffft.

Contacts needed a bit of a shuffle as the t610 just brought them all over as individual numbers. I brought them into Outlook where it was a bit easier to organise them. You can't seem to set contacts in groups that translate from outlook into the phone though. I later found out that my St Luke's Outlook also had my contacts from a previous sync with the t610, so now I have doubleups too :/

I'm an Expert!

It's official, Experts Exchange have marked me as an expert after a couple of days answering questions. Now I'm able to ask the
hard questions that I've been trying to solve here at St Luke's.

I recall having an EE account earlier in their incarnation as a free service, but they must have shut down old accounts once the paid service came in. Not entirely sure whether it's a workable model with paid membership as it is competing with many other free sites, but the quality of answers is certainly there.

World Builder Projects

Another good link for lots of world builer projects

Andrew's YouTUBE

Andrew (Bitshuffler) on YouTUBE.

Just passing by ...

Last Friday was Music Trivia and Karaoke night for youth. Joseph made up some questions for the trivia which included some Rolf Harris songs, so now I have bits of Rolf popping into my head. All I have to say that the boys who put the powder on the noses of the faces of the ladies of the court of King Caractacus were just passing by ...

RPG card game

Latest update: 7/12/09

Version Info:
version 0.8 - Simultaneous play. Deck to 10 cards total. Challenge dungeon has battles on the way out. Treasure changes
version 0.7 - Fleshed out the rules for the game a little more in a walk along the beach with Sandy. Mainly the play rules and deck construction.

RPG CARD GAME CONCEPT
- A game for 2 players with 2 decks of cards inspired by computer role playing games.
- One player plays the "Hero" the other plays the monsters, villians etc. One deck of cards is for the character, one for the generation of the opponents.
- Cards from the hearts suit represent life points, cards from the clubs suit represent attacking moves, cards from the spades suit represent defensive moves, cards from the diamonds suit represent treasure.
- The hero and the various monsters and villians are defined by a specific combination of cards from their respective pack of cards. The character definition is made up of 3 hearts cards and a play deck of 7 cards of clubs and spades. Monsters also include a treasure pile of 3 cards. The character level is the average of all cards that make up a deck.
- Players take turns attacking and defending simultaneously until one player is reduced to zero life.
- If the hero wins, a treasure card is drawn from the treasure pile. This card can eventually be converted into a card of equivalent rank in either hearts, spades or clubs to improve the character for the next adventure.
- Battles continue until the hero is defeated, or the hero beats the final 'boss'

STARTING PLAY
- The initial character definition of the hero includes 2,3,4 of hearts, Ace,2,3,4 of clubs and 2,3,4 of spades. Since the average value of all cards is 2.8, therefore the hero starts as a level 2 character (almost level 3).
Updated to here: 7/12/09
- The opposing player can then choose a monster to play. If playing a scenario, the scenario chart tells the opposing player what monster to play next. If playing a challenge, the opposing player can construct a character definition so that the monster's level is one below the hero's. At the start the monster may need to include blank cards (jokers or diamonds) in the play deck to reduce the level of the deck below 3.
- Place all hearts cards (that represent current life total) in the character definition in front of the player. Place all remaining hearts cards from the deck in an upside down pile to the side. These will be used later on to swap in or out when the hero or monster gets damaged so that the sum of all hearts cards in play is equivalent to the current life total.
- Players then shuffle all attack cards and defense cards (and dummy cards) into a deck.
- Draw the top card to see who goes first. The player with the highest rank card starts. If the rank is the same, the player with the attack card goes first. If both are attack cards, shuffle and redraw. Draw another 3 cards and place them all into your starting hand.

BATTLE PHASE
- The attacking player starts their turn by drawing cards from their deck until they have a hand of 4 cards.
- The defender plays first and can play any defensive card. If there are no defensive cards available, you may play any other card in your hand (attack or dummy cards) face down for a defense of 1.
- The attacker can then play any attacking card in their hand. If there are no attacking cards available, you may play any other card in your hand (defense or dummy cards) face down for a defense of 1.
- Any amount of attack above the defensive value is applied as health damage. The defender reorganises his health cards (hearts) to represent the new value. EG: Defender plays a 2 of spades, attacker plays a 5 of clubs, 3 damage is applied to health.
- If the defender's health is reduced to zero or below, the battle ends. If the hero wins, progress to the treasure drawing phase. If the monster wins the game is over.
- If the defender is still alive, the players start another turn with defender as the attacker and the attacker as a defender.
- Any cards played this turn are placed at the bottom of their respective decks.

SPECIAL CARDS
- The Ace and picture cards have special rules for their play.
- Ace: The ace of clubs is a dart, and will cause 1 point of damage regardless of what defense card is raised. [Rule for Ace of clubs]
- King: the Kings are not played like other cards, but are placed in front of the player during their turn IN ADDITION to a defensive or attacking card being played. The king in play add an additional point to defense or attack (depending on the king) for each subsequent card played. EG: playing a 9 clubs with a king of clubs in play will now be 10 points of damage
- [Jack, Queen rules]

TREASURE PHASE
- If the hero wins the battle, the monster shuffles the treasure cards in their character definition and the hero chooses one.
- The the hero can then convert the treasure card drawn to any other card of equivalent rank that is not currently in their character definition. EG: 5 of diamonds is drawn, the hero can convert this to a 5 of hearts, 5 of clubs or 5 of spades if they do not already have that card.
- If the treasure is converted, the player may then remove any card from their character definition to keep the number of hearts to 3 and the total attack and defense cards to 10.
- The hero may also hold onto the treasure card (or be forced to if they have all cards of that rank). Find the equivalent diamond card in the hero's deck and add it to the character definition. This card can then be used in subsequent treasure phases to combine with other treasure cards to give a higher rank to convert from. If the hero already has the same treasure card in thier character definition already, they cannot choose to take the card as treasure. The card may be used in conversion or aggregated onto another treasure card to make a treasure card of a rank that you do not have.
- Note that treasure cards in the character definition still add to the character level. Sum up all card ranks in the character definition including treasure and divide by 13 [possibly change deck size to make it divisible by 10?]

CHALLENGE MODE
[flesh out]

SENARIO MODE
Instead of playing a challenge where the monsters are on average a level below the hero, you can play a scenario where the monsters and rooms are laid out on paper and can be played like a choose-your-own-adventure

[more to come]

New card game

I've been thinking about creating another card game that plays like an RPG but uses a standard deck of cards. Obviously it'll have to use come creative interpretation, but I think it's possible. At first I was thinking it would turn out like an SMS game I was working on with a rock-scissors-paper type army listing, but recently I've been looking at a more involved one with scenarios and individual battles.

The current thinking is to have hearts represent current life points, clubs to represent damage, spades to represent shields or armour and diamonds for treasure. There would be an assortment of monster definitions which had a combination of cards to give an approximate strength, so a lightweight critter could possibly have 2,3,5 of clubs, 1,2 of spades, a 2 &3 of hearts and a treasure chest of 1,2,3. Hearts start on the table as life points, clubs and spades are combined into a deck and are drawn and played as the main part of the game, and one card from the treasure chest is randomly chosen if the monster is defeated. The treasure can then be converted into a card of equivalent cost in either hearts, spades or clubs to advance the character.

Last night I had a dream of a different type of game that played like a How to host a murder mystery crossed with liar, liar . Players are randomly dealt a card which sets their "character". Players then mingle and chat in character to determine who is the killer (the person with the highest card). It was more of a theatrical event in my dream which probably wouldn't play that way, so I'll leave it as that.

Happy Birfday too mee!

Another birthday is coming up so a convenient party was thrown together for this weekend. Sandy made a great cake in the shape of a computer with 5 jellybabies holding toothpicks on screen attacking a yellow licorice allsort blob. Suffice to say it was an apt representation of some of our latest WoW dungeon crawls by the Bowes clan. Might see if I can dig up a pic of it ..

Went and got a new chair today as a Mum & Dad present thing. Saw one that looked like an areon for $650, but there was only one left (the floor stock) and it .. err .. broke .. while I was fiddling with some knobs on the back. Sitting in a rather comfy black leather high-back exec chair that was 1/4 the price at $139. Feels about 90% as good as the 'galaxy', but a bargain at that price. I'll still keep a look out for an areon or the like as I'm needing a good quality chair to 'look after' my back. This one's a good placeholder and much better than my older chair which had a sunken seat that slid you out.

Other birthday gifts included a lunchbox, marsbars everywhere and some licorice allsorts. :9